Latest ipad blogs

With the advent of the iPad Air 2, this will probably be my last review of iPad Air cases, although I remain surprised at the number of variations available and how many suppliers continue to ship new products late in the game (though with the Air remaining in the line-up, they can still find revenue for cases despite a smaller market for the original Air.)

Game Centered features roundups and in-depth reviews of the best in iOS games and related gaming news. This week we have a special Halloween-themed installment featuring some of the best horrifying and fear-inducing games the App Store has to offer.

The good news that was buried in the iPad Air 2 (and iPad mini 3) announcement was that the cellular models would ship with a carrier-independent SIM card. This meant that users could decide which carrier to activate without being locked in. Unfortunately, the reality isn't quite as straightforward. As we wrote earlier, Verizon still requires their own SIM. But now we're learning that AT&T will "lock" the Apple SIM to AT&T's network the first time you activate it.

Do you know what #GamerGate is? It's a term that's received a great deal of publicity lately. If you are a someone who plays a lot of video games and keeps up with current events then you are likely quite familiar with GamerGate. Whatever your gaming platform of choice happens to be, whether it's a console, a tablet, or a smartphone, if you are more than a casual gamer then the issues that are swirling around the hashtag #GamerGate have to do with you. GamerGate is about the sometimes controversial content of video games, the people that play them, and the press that covers them, and from a broader perspective, GamerGate is about lingering stereotypes and prejudices that play out in video game land.

The recent blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy broke the mold for superhero movies. The characters, while part of Marvel's stable, were not traditional heroes like Thor, Iron Man, or Captain America, and the lead actor hadn't carried a film before. Even two of the lead actors, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, were just voices for a wisecracking raccoon and a tree with a limited vocabulary ("I am Groot!")

Really, Marvin from Germany? Do we all ask ourselves if our brand spankin' new, shiny, expensive electronics will bend? Personally, I think #BendGate has gotten a little out of hand. Check out the video below:

The Biweekly Giveaway – Award Winner Edition features prizes from companies that won iPhone Life awards at the recent Super Mobility Week powered by CTIA 2014 trade show! Be sure to enter the giveaway at iPhoneLife.com/giveaways to win prizes, which we'll announce November 3! We are raffling off tons of great accessories for FREE.

For the next few months we are running a special Award Winner Edition of our iPhone Life Biweekly Giveaway featuring prizes from companies that won iPhone Life awards at the recent Super Mobility Week powered by CTIA 2014 trade show! This weeks prizes are worth $265.00 so you definitely don't want to miss out on a chance to win!

Thanks to everyone who entered the October 20 iPhone Life Biweekly Giveaway! Every other week we give away three amazing prizes, so if you didn't win this time, make sure you enter the November 3rd giveaway and tell your friends to enter too!

This is really two mini reviews in one. A while back the folks at Parrot wanted me to check out their A.R. Drone remote controlled aerial vehicle. So I spent a couple of months doing some product testing. In the process I utilized the quadricopter's two onboard cameras along with Parrot's FreeFlight(Free) drone control app to shoot some video, which I wanted to include with my reviews. Then the dilemma arose of where the heck to find the time in my busy schedule to both write a review and edit about 25 minutes of aerial video down to a short snippet that I thought people might be interested in watching. Enter the remarkable video editing app, Replay, which I learned about during Apple's live presentation of the iPad Air 2.

If you like and use the SoundHound music app (free), which can guess melodies like a musical savant, then you might want to add TouchTunes (free). SoundHound recently announced a team up with TouchTunes: an in-venue entertainment and music platform that provides service at over 60,000 locations. With SoundHound and TouchTunes together, you can now get your online music choices queued up when visiting any TouchTunes supported location!

What's bigger than an iPhone, smaller than a MacBook, and the most anticipated Apple product since the original iPhone? On January 27, at a special invitation only event at the San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Steve Jobs announced Apple's new "magical, revolutionary product" -- the iPad. Meant to fill the gap between the laptop and phone, Jobs said it was "way better" than either. Let's take a look at it.

Thin, lightweight, and powerful

The iPad shares many hardware features with the iPhone, including an accelerometer, an orientation sensor to switch from portrait to landscape mode, solid-state memory, and the same 30-pin doc connector. Connectivity is also virtually the same, with wireless 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR included on all models.

iPad runs iPhone apps!

The iPad will run a version of iPhone OS, and the new device can run virtually any app developed for the iPhone or iPod touch. Aps developed for the iPhone can run on the iPad in native resolution but is large enough to touch type on.

The larger screen not only makes familiar iPhone apps like Calendar, Mail, and Safari look stunning, it also provides screen real estate for more complex elements in the UI. For example, Calendar display a split-sreen view that describes the day's appointments on the left and shows you a color map of used time slots on the right. The split-screen view in Contacts displays you contacts list on the left and the full information for the contact you've selected on the right.

An ebook reader and more

Although not build into the iPad, Apple will offer a free app called iBooks, which will allow you to download and read books from it's new virtual bookstore. The new iBooks store will be accessed from and as easy to use as iTunes.

The ultimate media device?

The iPad is not the world's first tablet PC or the first eBook reader. Toshiba, Lenovo, Acer, and others sell Windows-based tablets, and Amazon has had considerable success with it's Kindle. But Apple thinks the iPad will reinvent the category by offering a vastly superior multi-touch interface an easy access to a wide-variety of apps and media via iTunes. Aple hopes to make the iPad the ultimate media device by leveraging it's existing assets which include over 100 million paying iTunes customers, established relationships with music and video content providers, and over 100,000 iPhone OS app developers.